


if he the shining heart would eat

by partialconstellations



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Clothed Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Self-Doubt, Self-Hatred, Theon Greyjoy Lives, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Fingering, albeit in a very twisted way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-19 08:36:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20654294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partialconstellations/pseuds/partialconstellations
Summary: Theon has tried telling himself thatknowinghe’s dead is enough, with every fibre of his being, but it’s not, could never be enough.Hestill stalks his nightmares, with jangling keys, blood dripping from the knife, and, always, a laugh on his lips.It goes against everything he believes, has learned to make himself as small as possible, but Sansa herself has told him, through actions and words both, to stand tall, to stand up for himself and yet, Theon hates himself for asking, hates himself for knowing that he’s the one who’s responsible for putting that tension into Sansa’s body and onto her face.





	1. Theon

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This is seriously messed up. Nobody here is in a particularly good state of mind, everybody needs _all of the_ therapy, and I intersperse intimacy/sex with semi-graphic descriptions of Ramsay’s death in the first chapter, so if that sounds like something that might trigger you, please don’t read this. The second chapter deals with the aftermath and isn’t as explicit and (I think) works on its own, but if you skip this altogether, I understand. **Please heed the tags.**  
On the plus side, there aren’t any actual hearts being eaten.
> 
> Theonsa Week Day 6: Touch/Day 8: Death
> 
> Also, I have never been so unsure of writing/posting anything in my life, so here goes nothing, I guess. Excuse me while I go hide now.

The fire in the hearth is almost down to embers, those and the full moon the only sources of light in the Lady of Winterfell’s chambers. It’s enough to paint shadows dancing on the wall, to bathe Sansa’s finely-featured face asleep next to him into an eerie glow.

He blames the stillness of the night and the bright moonlight for sleep eluding him. His physical hurts are always agony and he has come to terms with that, even with the large bandage still covering his abdomen, the even stitches holding his wound together pulling if he moves wrong. There is no other reason for it, he tells himself, other than that his mind won’t shut up and it does that often. He got used to hurting, physical and emotional, and he got used to sleeping despite that. It’s the falling asleep that is the problem in general, fearing the terrors that come during sleep much more than the ones he could face during waking hours. It’s the terrors his mind conjures up that he can’t fight by himself, that he canʼt throw his broken body at.

Rolling over to look at Sansa’s quietly sleeping form, her breast rising and falling steadily, moonlight illuminating her hair, he reaches out for her with an unsteady hand, but he can’t bring himself to disturb her sleep, not yet. It’s almost as rare for her as it is for him to just sleep without any sign of nightmares.

His first nights in Winterfell, Theon could hardly sleep. It was too silent without the waves crashing against the stony shore below to lull him to sleep, and the shadows the moon painted onto the walls moved wrong without the water’s reflection. It took Robb crawling into his bed after he’d noticed how dark and large the bags under Theon’s eyes got and falling asleep next to him with steady breaths that turned into snores for Theon to finally be able to get a proper sleep. The younger boy’s sleeping form next to his own always soothed him, even when they weren’t boys anymore and got far too old for such sleepovers. 

Sometimes, they were joined by Robb’s younger siblings, when they came looking for their big brother after a nightmare or during a storm, when they couldn’t find him in his own chambers.

That it was always too cold for his comfort in Winterfell, even if the hot springs did their part to alleviate it, made explaining things easier. During the winter and late autumn it was common to share chambers and beds for warmth, and Theon, not being used to such a thing as summer snows, always had the excuse of being cold, which worked well enough. He would have never admitted that he liked sharing his bed for non-sexual means when he was a youth, of course.

Lady Stark might not have approved, but she didn’t outright do anything to disparage it either – it wasnʼt until Sansa got older and closer to her first moonblood, until Theon started sneaking out to the brothels, that she put a firm stop to her girls sneaking into Theon’s chambers for comfort. That they only did so when Robb was there – because Theon never went seeking comfort for himself, but Robb always seemed to know when Theon might need it, always too soft for his own good – didn’t matter. It wasn’t proper and that was the end of it. Robb stayed in his own chambers after that, in case any of his siblings might need his comfort. That Theon could have sought out Robb himself never occurred to him because that would mean admitting he needed something from someone else.

Now he knows that he is not only allowed to seek out comfort, but he manages to admit that he needs it and that there is no shame in needing help and asking for it. He doesn’t want to disturb Sansa’s quiet sleep, her with her own night terrors, but he still calls her name quietly, reaching out for her once again, to lightly touch her wrist with his fingertips. Sansa has become a light sleeper, in large contrast to when she was a girl, happily snoring away long after everyone had woken. It’s a trait shared between them now.

“How did he die?” Theon asks quietly when she blinks at him, a little disoriented, but her eyes focus on him almost immediately, roaming over him to assess where the question has come from. He knows he isn’t showing the usual signs of these kinds of questions, without sweat on his brow and his chest, without harried, darting eyes. Just a general exhaustion that is not caused by lack of sleep.

Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, Sansa sits up, braid falling over her shoulder, stretching her shift over her knees as she hugs her knees to her chest. The covers fall off her and she looks smaller, younger than she does during the daytime, without the armour of Lady of Winterfell she usually guards herself with. She doesn’t allow herself to be vulnerable, to be young, during the day. 

Her eyes don’t leave his face as she considers how to phrase her answer, watching his every movement, however minute. As she speaks, she does so slowly. “In the kennels,” she whispers, eyes flicking away from his face then, hands curling into fists as she draws her knees closer to herself.

Freeing himself of his own covers, shivering at the cold night air hitting his back, he crawls over to her and takes her hands into his own, prying her tightly clutched fingers where they’ve started digging into her palms to leave crescent-shaped marks apart. “Sansa, please,” he begs, hating himself for how thin and reedy his voice sounds, hating that he’s this desperate, that he’s obviously hurting her with this sudden, desperate need to _know_.

He has been told, of course, that Ramsay Bolton is dead, assumed he died in the battle or executed, but when pressed for details, Jon’s mouth had thinned into a thin line, and heʼd shaken his head. “Ask _her_,” was all he’d said on the matter, leaving no question on who he was referring to.

Theon hadn’t managed to work up the courage to ask her the question since, didn’t want to be the one to drag things that should be dead and forgotten to the surface. Theon has tried telling himself that _knowing_ he’s dead is enough, with every fibre of his being, but it’s _not_, could never be enough. _He_ still stalks his nightmares, with jangling keys, blood dripping from the knife, and, always, a laugh on his lips. 

It goes against everything he believes, has learned to make himself as small as possible, but Sansa herself has told him, through actions and words both, to stand tall, to stand up for himself and yet, Theon hates himself for asking, hates himself for knowing that he’s the one who’s responsible for putting that tension into Sansa’s body and onto her face.

Drawing her lower lip into her mouth, Sansa looks up at him out of the cornflower blue eyes she shares with Robb, now full of horror, and softly shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, her hands still trying to curl up again, still clutched in his hands. She tries to shake him off, but only weakly, both of them knowing that she could, if she truly didn’t want him to touch her. Could tell him not to, and he would. Instead, the words “don’t make me” leave her lips, still so quiet, a plea written plainly on her face.

He wants so desperately to draw her into his arms and tell her it’s alright, wants to drop the entire matter. His thumb caresses over the back of her knuckles. “Sansa, he’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore. But I need to _know_.”

She recoils at his words and for a moment he thinks he’s lost her, that his words have shaken loose something he can’t even begin to imagine. “I killed him.” They usually don’t avoid the name, try to speak it as plainly as they can to each other, so his titles – lord, husband, master – lose their impact. It makes him more real, more of a man to be beaten, less a monster and shadow to be feared. But not tonight. He nods acknowledgement, that part being clear once he’d found the courage to ask Jon. Rubbing what he hopes are soothing circles onto the back of her hands with his thumbs, he tries to encourage her to continue talking, looking mutely at her.

“You don’t understand. I’m a monster, just like him.” Her voice breaks as she looks away from him, trying to snatch her hands out of his, but he holds on, nothing else in the world more important than the touch that connects them.

And with those words, the whole thing makes sense. She _blames_ herself. How can she _possibly_ blame herself? “Whatever you did to him, he did worse by a thousand-fold.” He draws her hand below his shirt, taking some effort to open her hand with his own and smoothes her hand against his scarring, where his skin is taut and barely holding itself together, a canvas of carved marks, stitched skin and butchery. “He deserved it.” Her hand tightens into his skin, fingernails scratching him by accident, just slightly, but he startles nonetheless and quickly composes himself in fear of losing her to a guilt she does not deserve to feel. “I need to know,” he pleads. “Please.”

He still sees doubt eating away at her, deep in her eyes and she’s still chewing on her lower lip, surely drawing blood, but finally, she nods, just once, firmly. Getting on her knees, she leans closely into him and presses her lips against his own. It’s too dry and she tastes of iron, even if he can’t feel the blood in her mouth where she has split the skin of her lip. 

“Alright,” she breathes against him as they part, her lips cracked and stained red. “Don’t let go.” Her hand is still touching his chest and the other one is around his own, pulling him towards herself by his hand, drawing it under her shift with the same absolute certainty that she rules with. Flattening his palm against her skin, he curls his arm around her and draws her even closer and into his lap, until her knees bracket his hips, thighs closing tightly around him, with no space left between them. She’s warm and soft and smooth under the fingers of one hand, twisted and gnarled under the other. They’re both marked.

“Please tell me,” he asks as he dips his head to her neck, licking a long, broad stripe up her jaw, below her ear. She sighs, her body trembling against his as she does.

“Jon had him on the ground,” she begins, her voice still quiet, but steady. His fingers tighten into her flesh and her hand closes around his own again. He expects her to ask him to stop, but she just adjusts his grip before she continues talking, voice becoming steadier with each word spoken. “I thought he might beat him to death, but instead Jon just looks up at me, with all of this rage in his eyes and it goes out within a heartbeat.” As he listens, truly not knowing if picturing it makes it better or worse, he caresses the scarring on her stomach with trembling hands, where scars from gauntleted hands imprinted on her many years ago intermingle with those a few years old, all of them faded but ever-present. She breathes in sharply under his touch as his fingers go up further, where her skin softens and he cups her breast, still under her shift. “He had him put in chains and I ordered to have him brought down to the kennels.” She breathes in sharply, closing her eyes as he squeezes.

He wants to ask, if that was for him, if she did it for him, because of him, but he keeps his mouth shut, halting his movements for just a second when she opens her eyes again to looks at him. Her pupils are blown wide, clear and knowing. “Don’t stop.” He obeys, can’t deny her. Whatever this is, if she wants it like this, she will get it. He loosens his grip on her, pulls down her shift to put his mouth on the skin of her breast, tasting her, inhaling the scent of her as he does.

Whimpering, she throws her head back. “He was sitting there, chained, and he was still taunting me, still trying to get the upper hand, still trying to worm his way into my head, like he could still win and _always_ grinning, through all that blood.” The image blurs on the back of his eyelids and Theon’s grip tightens to the point where his joints start protesting and he needs to lift his head to look up at her, and Sansa is just looking down at him, her face and neckline flushed with red spots. She blinks at him, lifts her hand against his cheek. “I told him what I would do to him. He hadn’t fed his hounds, you see, he told us so the night before. I told him that his words would disappear with him, his house, his very name.” She stares down at him with a serious expression so contrary to the excited flush of her skin, the soft press of her hand on his cheek, all while holding onto him for dear life, her thighs squeezing so tightly around him. “I was going to make sure there was nothing left to remember him.”

“Only us,” he says, still hating himself for the words, that a dead man still has so much power over him. What he wouldn’t give to have every memory of his torment erased, whenever he woke up without knowing where he was, _who_ he was, the word _master_ slipping from his lips too easily. Except. Except there is Sansa. 

“Yes.” She takes his hand with her own again and guides him down between her legs, places it on her upper thigh. “Please,” she begs and his fingers find a spot on her thighs where _he_’s left further marks on her and Theon tries his best to touch every single one of them, to draw over them, mark her himself, before entering her carefully with his fingers and dragging them out of her again, to slick her with her own wetness. 

She meets his fingers with a thrust that takes him by surprise as he presses against her, with a lot more force than he intended. Crying out, but still bucking against his palm, Sansa continues speaking. “I watched as his hounds were released and I watched as they started tearing into him, started devouring him. And he screamed. Oh, he screamed.” Theon tries to imagine it, the way he died, the hounds that he had become so familiar with when—when. Hoping against hope that maybe, it would make him whole again, but no. Instead, he just wishes he could have seen it, so he is able to believe it.

Theon’s breath hitches as her hand presses against him, flat against his chest, but her fingers are trembling and soon, she is shaking against him with her entire body. She’s quiet. She hasn’t peaked, not like this. When she speaks, her voice cracks with wrecked breaths. “I’ve never heard a sweeter sound. I enjoyed those screams, Theon. I enjoyed _it_, all of it. I enjoyed seeing him torn apart by his own hounds.” He lifts his hand from beneath her shift, still with her slickness on his fingers and it’s cramping, but he can use the back to stroke her cheek. It comes away stained with tears.

“What kind of monster does that?” she asks in a small, trembling voice, one that she tries to bury, one that only comes out during her worst nights. “What kind of monster enjoys inflicting that kind of horror? I enjoyed it, all of it; taunting him before he died, seeing the look on his face as he realised what was going to happen to him. I still hear him screaming and I shouldn’t enjoy it, but I do. I _still_ do.” She swallows and he can see herself forcing the last sentence out. “Theon, I can’t be like _them_.” And there, she starts sobbing, on that last, little word, clutching his shirt and she’s shaking so hard against him that he can feel it down to his very core. 

“Sansa, no. Stop. You are _not_.” He holds her sobbing form, trembling against him, still in his arms, still wet and slick between her thighs, he can feel it against his leg, and as he tries to think of what to say to assure her, he comes up with nothing. “You are not. Like them,” he repeats as he draws her closer to him, impossibly close, wraps both his arms as tightly around her as he is able to.

“You enjoyed it because you could finally be secure in the knowledge that he is dead and can’t hurt you anymore.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath before admitting, “I understand. I would have given anything to see him dead myself. Maybe he wouldn’t come at night then anymore.”

She twists in his arms to lower her head on his shoulder, pressing a kiss against the curve of his jaw. He turns his head to look at her, face still splotched from crying, but the relief at having spoken the words aloud, perhaps having told him and not being rejected is obvious when she speaks. “You know he still comes to me, too. Some things are not forgotten so easily,” she says, looking too vulnerable curled up into him like this. “We just have to learn how to cope with ourselves,” she continues, too quietly.

“You’re not a monster, love. He deserved it,” he assures her, again, dropping a kiss on her head. Pulling the furs over them both, he settles them both down, stretches his cramping legs out below the covers and then pulls her close again. Sansa curls into herself, tucks her head beneath his chin, a leg thrown over him in a desperate attempt for as many points of contact as humanly possible.

“Thank you,” Theon whispers against the crown of her head once her breathing has evened out and pulls her more tightly against himself. She only shifts her leg further around him, digging her heel into the small of his back. He wishes that it’s enough, knowing how _he_ died, that there was no possibility he would return, but Theon only feels emptiness.


	2. Sansa

The next night, at dinner, and when Sansa retires to bed after, Theon is nowhere to be found. Her work started and put down a thousand times as she waits for him, until the realisation he’s not coming and a cold panic roils down in her gut. 

The guard beyond her door, a green boy by all measures, one clearly not deemed yet old enough to go south with the rest of the army, draws himself up hastily, having sunken against the wall, as she leaves her chambers. He quickly follows her as she brushes past him.

“My thanks, I won’t need to be accompanied further,” she tells the boy once she reaches the kennels. Opening his mouth to argue, he is silenced by a single look. Without looking back, trusting he will take up position by the entrance instead of following her, she opens the heavy door with a deep breath and steps down the short set of stairs, down into the dank, dark warrens. The smell of fur and faeces is almost overwhelming, and she tries to tell herself it’s alright, that most of Ramsay’s hounds were put down when deemed unsalvageable by the new kennel master and were largely replaced by their own pups. But that’s part of the problem, they look too much like Ramsay’s hounds not to unsettle her, not to remind her of that night, even if they’ve been raised properly, without that viciousness ingrained into Ramsay’s dogs.

Sansa knows where she is going to find Theon and the walk past the dogs seems longer than it ever has, but there he is, sitting on the floor of the corridor, back against the wall, knees up against his chest, arms around them like a child, opposite the cage he was once held in himself. Small mercies, she supposes, that he is not _in_ there. He lifts his head as she walks closer, making her footfall heavier on purpose.

Once she’s sitting down next to him, she offers him her hand, palm up, and it takes him a moment to reach for it, but he does, curling his fingers around her hand, intertwining what is left of his with hers and squeezes. “I’m sorry,” she offers quietly, having no other words, none of them seeming right.

“I wish …” he starts and then stops himself, turning towards her, to look at her with unsure eyes. “I wish it was enough, _knowing_.” His eyes flicker from her to the cage and back. “Sansa, it’s not.”

“Would it help if you saw where it happened?” she asks, eyes firmly on Theon, trying not to blink.

He considers the question for a moment, worrying at his fingers and her own, and then nods, but still seeming unsure. “Perhaps.”

“Come, then.” She stands, only letting go of him so she can adjust her grip to help him up, knowing that sitting on the cold floor, back against an unheated wall, for however long he has been can’t have been good for his joints. He braces his hand against the wall, fingers splayed, and then his hand is in her own again. Taking a good deal of his weight – because he’s left his cane gods know where – she tugs to make him follow. Silently, they retrace their steps to a cage, empty, at a cross-section. Sansa releases Theon’s hand, but he’s still gripping hers, so she touches the bars of the cage with the other one.

“Here?” he asks, voice too high and the rising panic plain on his face.

“Yes,” she confirms, and this is when he releases her hand, lets his own sink against the metal. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he drops his hand to the bar holding the door in place, no lock in place. He turns to her, only slightly. “Will you come?”

Instead of replying, she closes her own hand around the back of his, and moves it, just a little, to close around the bar. His fingers close further of their own volition, but if he needs to, he can pretend that it’s her who raised the bar and opened the cage.

She follows him as he takes hesitant steps into the cage, which looks just like any other. It had been scrubbed clean the day after she woke with her first night terror caused not by Ramsay, but by what she had learned about herself, alone in her parents’ chambers, and had wished any evidence of what she’d done to him erased.

Looking at Theon, who looks so lost, standing in the middle of it, his eyes darting around, looking for anything to confirm Ramsay is dead, gone, and was going to stay as such, she regrets that impulse. Perhaps the blood-spattered walls would have eased his burden. As it is, there is nothing to reassure him but her word.

Sansa hadn’t peaked last night, which only brings her small comfort about the things she’s made him do to her while telling him about Ramsay’s death. It had seemed prudent to feel happiness course through her and being able to attribute it to him and not the feeling of exhilaration she’d felt once she saw the hound bite down for the first time. Selfish, selfish and stupid. 

Sometimes, on bad days and worse nights, Sansa can still feel Ramsay Bolton’s touch on her, can feel him move inside her. It’s those days and nights she savours his screams and it’s in the cold light of the mornings after, when she wakes in Theon’s arms, she questions if she deserves happiness. The cold light of those mornings where it gnaws at her, that cruelty she has found inside of herself, that cruelty she had picked up and sharpened into a dagger.

She’s standing in the door, still watching Theon as he resigns himself that this is all he’s going to get for reassurance and comfort, returning to her, reaching out for her again. “He’s dead and gone, and there is no way he can come back,” Theon whispers, for himself, and “you are not like him,” he whispers, for Sansa.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he settles against her and she presses a kiss against his temple, tries to make it as light and comforting as she can. Sansa lets herself sink against him, breathing him in, knowing he would assure her and himself, again and again, until she believed him, until there is no trace of guilt, no trace of Ramsay Bolton, left in her.

But she knows she would not believe him, never. That touch of cruelty has been inside of her far longer, and while Joffrey and Cersei and Littlefinger had dragged it to the surface, Ramsay has been the one to twist the knife far enough for her to use it.

Sansa looks at Theon, the way his eyes focus on the cage where Ramsay Bolton died screaming, where his hounds devoured the last piece left of her innocence with him, and wonders. Wonders if, at least, it’s enough for him. If at least _he_ can let go of the bits of Ramsay left inside of himself, even if she can’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t think Sansa has anything to feel guilty about regarding Ramsay, but I do think she might gripe with her sharper edges in bad moments.
> 
> Title from Rasmus Bjørn Anderson’s public domain translation of the Skáldskaparmál from the Prose Edda - specifically, the Old Norse version of the story of Sigurd/Siegfried the dragonslayer (it’s more complicated than that, but you didn’t come here for a lecture, did you).
> 
> Also, I had Ghost’s Prequelle on loop for like three days straight while writing this, which might explain one or two things.


End file.
